About

Tuesday, July 31, 2018

A secret, unspoken joy of a small town is that particular
moment when your professors go from being authoritarian experts and become your equally
lost peers. Sometimes it’s a blessing, a means to return the gift of support and
motivation your fifth-grade teacher instilled in you.

One of the most impactful adults of my
childhood would go out of her way to make sure I’d be able to escape the other students
when overstimulated by their, we’ll say, antics. She supported my creativity
and rule breaking more than any other, and even allowed me to take charge of an
entire class period to “teach short story writing” to my fellow third-graders.

As an adult, I encountered this woman again in my creative writing group, where I found her to be immensely insecure
and uncertain about her convictions. Other members looked down on her and
questioned her choices constantly, a giant man barking, “WHY?!” at her anytime
he disagreed with her vision. Unexpectedly, I was given power to empower her just like she had for me.

It can also be a bad thing. Teachers are humans
too, and with that comes all of the pettiness and politics that teenagers take
possession of. My high school drama teacher had been the longest, most constant
relationship out of all of the people who have taught me. I thought her stern
and opinionated, but intelligent, passionate, and respectful.

Yet, when I became a teacher myself, I started
to question her decisions, starting to realize the ineffectiveness (and
unfairness) of how she prioritized the students with natural showmanship over
teaching the eager. She wanted high quality shows with minimal effort, not to
teach, not to challenge. There weren’t many “lessons” in her lessons. As I
worked with her as an adult, professional peers, I found more unsavory
practices. She would scream at the techies, insult her directors, and take over
any group discussion to make it about her needs and her opinions. Her judgment
was law and everyone else was a philistine. The work she produced itself wasn’t
something I was too enamored with, and soon the woman who I’d idolized in my
youth was nothing more than a stress-inducing diva.

She had had a lot to say about… well, everything,
and was my initial introduction to a great deal of writing/acting rules. “Everyone
wants something even if it’s just a glass of water,” sort of opinions. And I,
as someone who despises being told what to do, never took it seriously, doing my own thing regardless. It
was as I aged that I realized that these parroted pieces of advice weren’t
always the clearest. Once I understand—via experience and practice—what they
were trying to get out, I had more
respect for them. But there’s one thing I’ve heard constantly that I still to this
day think is too vague to be remotely useful: “Every story needs a beginning,
middle, and end.”

While talking with a woman about the
playwriting group I founded this year, she mentioned her idea—a café with
strange characters—and my past mentor’s criticism: this whole beginning,
middle, end shebang. The writer accepted the advice eagerly, but was unclear
about which direction to go with it. To me, that made sense, as I always wanted to quip back,

“The beginning is when I start talking, the end is where I stop, and the middle is everything in between.”

It’s sort of like when people say, “Get rid of
it because it’s unnecessary.” Well, the whole book is unnecessary really. More to the point, I find that it’s misdirecting from the real
issue—it’s not unnecessary, it’s that it’s boring
and easy to cut. Or boring and doesn’t lead anywhere. Maybe it’s a distraction
or looks like the author is rambling. But, the more important part is that it is boring, regardless of the impact it has later on. If it was interesting and off-topic, no one would bat an eye (unless they wanted to hear more about it.) So-called unnecessary details are
what separates the story from the summary, and sometimes those little jokes that
don’t move the plot forward are what actually keep the audience glued to the screen. To
me, the word “unnecessary” is a shame tactic that requires little thought to get something to change something.

As an avid reader of new writers, I know how
there are stories that don’t have their beginning, middle, ends, just verbose
tangents that make you feel like you’ve wasted your time. Yet, I also say that there
are so many exceptions to what constitutes as the effective trifecta of a story plot, it’s
mostly based on an, “I’ll know it when I see it,” mentality. It’s difficult to
warn a writer starting a new book what to look for without the use of a formula,
and surprisingly, there are many formulas and rules to choose from. I recommend
that all authors experiment with these, but that takes years of tooling around
and research.

So what about the new writer who wants to make
something cohesive?

A cardinal rule is to remain
focused.

If I’m telling you the story about how I broke
up with my boyfriend, I’m going to include the aspects and factors that I
consider relevant. I may begin my story with how we met, but only if I think
how we met is demonstrative of how we ended. So, by the fact that I had to ask
him out and be incredibly aggressive, it might be a great place to begin if our
relationship ended due to his lack of effort. How we met foreshadows how we
ended. But if we just met in a grocery store and we broke up because he doesn’t
think brushing his teeth is important, that might not be the best place to
start.

What’s “on topic” is really easy to identify
because it’s a true story: we have all this information we know we can’t tell each second of—two years together, there’s a lot
of days that can be summed up or skipped over—and so we have a better natural
filter. (Some of us more than others, of course.)

Fiction is a little more difficult, especially genres
like fantasy and sci-fi when details like where the milk she pours into her cereal
came from might be something the audience needs
to know for sake of world building. Plus people love subplots.

However, the rules remain the same. Millions of
things happen to these characters, not all of which need to be explained.
Staying focused doesn’t necessarily mean to one story, but it does mean to ask
yourself how information relates to other information, or if a scene is even
telling the audience anything. Just
because a character would go to the
bathroom, being human an all, it can be left out unless the fact that they went
at that time informs later or earlier actions.

Beginnings

Really, most people would agree that you can
start a book out in anyway as long as it’s interesting. Personally, I would
focus on that first, but I will throw out a few things that seems to be
successful.

Good beginnings typically…

-Give strong sense of character.

In
Guardians of the Galaxy, Peter Quill’s
dance through the “rat” infested cavern and his argument with his humanoid opponents
immediately give a sense of how he handles conflict and endears him to us.

-Gives a sense of the author.

Whether
it be The Martian or Pride and Prejudice, the strength of those
first paragraphs lie in the perspective/philosophy/sense of humor. We get a
vibe to the voice of the book, and some insight into who the writer is; why
they’re writing the damn thing in the first place.

-Gives a sense of the overall mood and/or theme
of the book.

“It
was a dark and stormy night.” Horror, comedy, drama, a rollercoaster, you get a
taste of what emotions the rest of the story intends to instill in you.

-Sets up important details of the character’s
situation that explains later actions.

When
we see that Lilo has no friends, no family, and is intensely weird and alone,
it becomes the foundation to not only the stakes in losing Stitch, but also
makes sense as to why she remains loyal to her terrible, disloyal dog.

Middle

I
remember, when first writing a novel, thinking about what the hell happens in
the middle? And the truth is, this is the most flexible, yet easiest part to
get wrong (as in, lose your audience.)

Good middles
typically…

-Make a
huge change in the character’s situation.

So, if we see how the character
handles conflict in their comfort zone, what happens when we take them to a
place they’re unfamiliar? Blake Snyder, writer of Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need refers
to this as a “upside down world” and the idea is, after establishing a normal
life, how far in the opposite direction can we go? I don’t think it needs to be
absolutely polar, but definitely the middle is going to want to look very
different from the beginning, if that be setting, social standing, or the types
of problems the character now has.

-Explain
the character’s priorities and concerns.

There should be a moment of doubt and
resistance when a character’s life changes—as humans don’t like change in
general, and it adds to who your character is. When suddenly he’s faced with a
decision, you learn a lot more about it when it comes to why he hesitates. Why wouldn’t
he do something? What ultimately propels him?

-Show
the “concept.”

Your book often starts out with an
idea, such as a young boy finds out he’s a wizard and goes to school, or even
you’re in a café with a bunch of colorful locals. After you set up what’s
normal and strange for the life of the people in your story, take a moment to
play with the actual concept that caused you to write the book. Have Harry take
a magic class. Let your locals make jokes at each other’s expense. For the
first portion of middle section, write the book the way you want it to be
without worrying (too much) about stakes or progression of plot.

-Set up
more reasons the character needs to succeed.

The beginning needs to tell your
audience why the character cares about whatever it is he’s trying to do, but
the middle needs to emphasize the importance. This is where you start adding
stakes and developing even more reasons for the character to pursue his goal
and, most importantly, to do it now.

The End

A good
ending will, of course, tie the majority your threads together and leave the
reader feeling something. Many amateur writers fail in this area because,
honestly, they get impatient and they quick. They rush the ending and sort of just
stop.

Endings,
especially for novels, can get away with “lacking” certain aspects, even being
improved because of it. Books in series, for instance, don’t want every problem
tied up, and even standalones might do better if you leave the audience with a
question rather than answering it for them. That being said, it’s very easy for
a reader to feel ripped off if the author doesn’t have an ending with an impact.

Good
endings typically…

-Leave
the audience feeling something has changed.

A reader will put the book down
feeling scared or on edge, excited or satisfied. They might have new intellectual
concepts to chew over, or even be inspired in their own life to make a difference.
A bad ending will make a reader wonder why they bothered picking up the book in
the first place, typically because though the author tried to instill emotions,
they did not succeed.

-Utilize
emotional swings within the last few pages to achieve this.

There should be a moment of doubt as
to whether or not the character will succeed/how they will succeed. If the hero ultimately wins the battle, at
one point, he needs to look like he genuinely might lose. You don’t have to
convince the reader of this, many books don’t, but if you can, all the better. If he comes in and just wins everything,
blowing away the enemy in one fell swoop, the conflict doesn’t look hard
enough, and the ending isn’t as much of a payoff. If you don't know what the main character is trying to succeed at, it's a sign that your story is just unfocused rambling, and it's likely you're boring the reader.

-Make
it clear why you told the story.

It was funny, arousing, or
cathartic. It explained a big problem in our world we need to solve, or at
least open up to discussion. You had a point, and you made it, even if you don’t
give answers.

-It makes
sense as to why we saw the rest of the story.

If the ending would work just as
well without the buildup, then the buildup isn’t working. Because we saw the whole
thing from beginning to end, we see how what happened in scene two makes the
finale make sense/more important to us as the audience. This falls in line with
staying focused; at the last scene, we know why we needed to learn everything
we did throughout the book.

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“And
it looks like it,” I replied, turning him back towards his seat. “Color in the
background and then you can be done.”

When
the students get older, the arguments get harder. Third graders sort of accept
your answers for what they are, but middle schoolers start to become pedantic
and make “On-Paper” rebuttals that can stump you if you don’t fully know why—or
are willing to admit the truth about why—you believe what you believe.

Adults
can be just as bad. “Artistic vision” makes me want to beat someone with a
keyboard. Not because their tastes differ from mine, but because so many
half-assed pieces are stunted by that excuse. It’s not that you create
something “ugly” and are proud of it; it’s when you’re new to what you do and
don’t challenge yourself. When something looks unfinished, or is painfully
dull, and it’s claimed to be the vision in the first place.

On
the other hand, sometimes that “finished” look is actually just an arbitrary
restriction of professionalism; a singular method society demands even though
many other options work just as well. There are associations, like the papyrus
or comic sans font—even Times New Roman for hell’s sake—that come off as
amateurish simply because the average Joe has access to it. There are cultural
traditions, like ties are formal because ties are formal, which, one day,
someone decided to buck the rule and created a new association—ties are for
punk rock. The rule made way for a contradiction; the impact is caused by the breaking
of the expectation. It begs the question: What is innovative and changing convention
versus what is a mere amateur who doesn’t know how to do it correctly?

And more importantly, what do we do with the untalented
artist who claimed his poor execution was just above our plebian imagination?

I should mention at this point I’m currently tranq’d out by
anti-anxiety medication. For a long time when confronted with (what I considered)
a poorly skilled soul who cried “vision!” I told myself to mind my own business
and stop getting worked up—that focusing on the quality of my own skillsets is
what will bring me satisfaction and yield results. But when you’re constantly
looping into fight or flight mode, already feeling hot with pent up rage, this can
be hard to do. Now that I’m synthetically calm, it’s easy for me to say the obvious:
Don’t argue with bullshit artists. Worry about your own bullshit if you want to
improve.

As I work with people of all ages, I find that the real
trick to speedy development is simply looking to what they avoid. There are
areas that don’t draw our interest, that we’re not practiced in, that we cut
corners with, or ignore all together. These spots, blindspots as I refer to
them, are easy to enhance on their own, and enhancing those will improve the
broader picture in turn.

It’s a fairly quick and fun process if the artist is willing
to a) acknowledge it is being unfairly ignored b) actually do something about
it. Even a little something.

This might be the white of the paper on the drawing. It
might that you don’t have a clue what women characters are thinking when a man
awkwardly hits on them. It may be you zone out during action sequences, or don’t
care about building a world that’s unlike what others have already seen, or
that you find several different camera angles a waste of everyone time. It may
be shadow, color, or just making your straight lines actually straight. In
fact, it could be pretty much anything, and you may care so little about it you
won’t even notice you haven’t touched it.

Sometimes, seeing these things can be difficult, even for the willing; on occasion they’re small
and subtle, or it’s not a question you even thought to ask. You don’t always
know what you don’t know. Which is one of the best reasons to get outside
feedback. But, really, I’ve often found that most people are consciously bracing
against a solution they’re already afraid of, a problem they’re denying, or a
convention they’ve rejected that, if they just experimented a little, would
open up a world of options.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had the same old arguments with
children that I have been fighting all my life. Not just with my peers or my
students, but even with myself. It’s the real question for every artist. Am I being
too hard on myself? Or am I just being a lazy bullshitter?

We all have those moments when we can’t decide if it’s good
enough, or the time we knew it wasn’t but couldn’t pinpoint why. In these times,
I’ve realized there’s an easy question to ask yourself:

Is there a part of the story that I’m avoiding because I
don’t know how to do it right?

And, as I say to my students, if the answer’s yes, there’s
an easy solution.

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Tuesday, July 24, 2018

I never believed college would be a magical ticket
to better pay and respect. I did believe I would get through it with my personality
and mind intact. Oh, the naivety of youth!

I went to college because I didn’t know what else
my next step would be. High school has a way of pushing you forward while just float
there, and when you finally get dumped into the sea, the opportunities leading
off in any direction, you might suddenly realize you weren’t actually taught to
swim or how to navigate.

But I hear echoes of the millennial philosophy,
one filled with either criticism or complaints. Many people my age were told
that college would lead to bigger and better jobs, and that you would end up
working at a gas station if you chose a different path. This is attitude I’ve
witness multiple times, either via the regret of those who pay the big bucks to
take the most traveled path leading nowhere, or the disdain of our older
generation attacking that sense of entitlement. My college boyfriend once said
to me, point blank, that he would not take entry-level jobs or work for low pay
if he had a college degree. The degree was to give him a leg up and have him
skip the grunt work. He was a theatre major with no work experience and
remained unemployed for the following two years, save for the volunteer work he
did at a theatre. To this day, almost a decade after he graduated, he still
lives at home and seeks out a masters.

Recently, I found a friend in a similar position,
graduating after a good period of time, to find the workforce abhorrent. Having
lived off a full ride scholarship since high school, her first foray into
retail ended explosively. She now tells me she won’t get a job outside her artistic
field and is supported by her boyfriend’s parents.

When I first graduated during the height of the
recession, I felt completely lost. I had believed that the answers would just
come to me—most people told stories of finding their career by accident—and yet,
there I was in Los Angeles, unable to get a basic retail job. I struggled to
determine since high school if I should focus my efforts and education on a “career”
day job, or if I should just keep myself afloat, giving as much energy as I could
to my real work. For months I
wallowed in stagnancy, until finally I moved back home, found a job with a
theatre company and started to work my ass off for what probably accumulated
into two bucks an hour.

Since graduation, I've worked for theatre groups,
a fabric store, a dog walking company, extracurricular education, a restaurant,
a bar, a coffee shop, and a gift store. I took jobs as they came, moving all
across the country and the world as I tried to figure what I wanted in life.

In 2016, I was living with my then-boyfriend in
his home country. I couldn’t work yet, still on a visitor’s visa, deciding if I
would commit to him and moving to Australia—halfway around the world. The things
I had waited for for so long—a husband, a dog, having a permanent place to
live, and a space of my own—were right in my grasp. But it had been so hard to
get there and not really worth it. At all. He was the wrong guy, and the
country, while beautiful, had restrictions that penalized me as a writer. I
talk to many artists in Perth, and they all admitted that those who took it
seriously would move to the U.S. or Britain. Even their own bookstores were filled
with American works with only a few “hometown heroes” being praised in a sort
of, “Good for you!” kind of way.

All the sudden, my life took a turn. Once the
relationship ended astride my visa, I strove to do all the things moving to Australia
would mean. I lived in NYC, started submitting my book to American agents, and
experienced a year of the quintessential starving artist.

But I didn’t want that either.

I found myself stressed and constantly
concerned with money. My roommate was batshit crazy, checking my lightbulbs
when I left for work and abruptly stopping her phone call to shout at me there
was literally a singular hair in the tub.

So back to Wyoming came I, determined to focus
on my writing as my real job. For the first time, I made a decision. Writing
was my career, and I’d take only work that didn’t subtract from it. Go to work and
leave it there. No mental labor or decision making, little personal investment
in the outcome. A job in which I had to take charge and worry about drastically
subtracted from my ability to do so for my books. You only have so much to give.

Part of my work now focuses on marketing. I’m
expected to create “personas” of my target readers—fictional people based off
the sort of audience I’m aiming for. It also reminds me of how much salesmanship
and presentation is relevant to being successful, and how easy it is as a
writer to avoid talking to people all together.

I often felt like day jobs got in the way of
really pursuing and having time for my real
work, but there’s a lot of basic training that a writer needs if she wants
to make a living, or even just be read by people who she hasn’t met. Or even
those she has. These skills are not naturally learned during the actual writing
process, but are quickly taught when you have to work for someone.

-How to talk to people, including negotiating
with those who have financial leverage over you, or unsatisfied readers.

-That complaints about pricing aren’t always indicative
of being “too expensive.” It’s common and not always intuitive. (People tend to
complain more the cheaper your product is.)

-How not to
approach a sale - a store or a manager you hope to sell your product to.
Negativity is always off putting, and no matter how friendly or chatty you are
with the employees, you must talk to
the manager to get results.

-Just how important location is to selling
something well. Both the shop itself, but its position in the shop.

-How much more effective a personal, one on one
sale is to lambasting the public.

By playing “games” to see how good of a
salesperson I could be, whether that means which words to use or how to
reorganize the store, I got the opportunity for trial and error without a lot
of risk on my part. Since I don’t care if the product is actually purchased, I
don’t feel bad when the customer turns me down, but learn about why they did
and have ideas on what to try next time. And there will be a natural next time
without needing to put myself out there. Because I’ve worked along side a
variety of people, seen hiring practices, had to deal with inventory and
restrictions, I’m much further along in terms of having a head for business,
how to work with people, red flags of bad hires, and how to present my work in
a professional, trustworthy way.

Yesterday, I somehow got myself roped into the planning
of a fundraiser non-related to anything I’ve been trying to save my focus for. As
I scanned down the list of options for me to take the reins on, I felt a sickness
in my stomach. So much work. So much stepping out of my comfort zone! But there
was an obvious choice on there: Marketing. No one wanted to do it. I’m trying
to learn it. I have other members of the committee with experience and ideas
who can give me a good head where to start, and it’s a great place to begin my
trial and error without having my name directly attached to any missteps. As I
reframed the sudden responsibility in that light, I went from dread to excitement.
Learning is a part of a process, and it’s better to have a safety net and other
people to help you than to try and figure it out all by yourself when
everything’s on the line.

You may hate your job or feel like it’s a waste
of time. Maybe you don’t want one at all unless it’s directly taking your career
forward. But you never know how it might help you with necessary lessons you
never would have thought about writing by yourself in the corner of your house
with fictional people backing you up. Sometimes, you have to get out into the
world and test things outside of a vacuum, and a day job you’re not super
invested in can be just the place.

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Friday, July 13, 2018

My personal abrasion towards “formulas” and
“writing rules” has been a little bit of a mystery. In my adulthood, I realized
parts of it had to do with my parents’ tendency to be a little too free with
advice and constructive criticism, often their impulsive ideas putting me into
embarrassing situations. Anyone who has received advice—whether it be on
writing, dating, parenting, travel, or auto repair—has found that not all
opinions are helpful, some downright problematic.

In fact, I’ve started to realize that people
often advocate for their biggest flaws. I often tell the story about the
unpublished writer whose English came across as a second language due to his
overwriting and perfectly proper grammar, and how he “reminded” me to never put
a preposition at the end of a Facebook status so that I am practiced in perfect
grammar for my actual work. I politely reminded him that his way of writing
wasn’t for everyone, and not a style I was particularly interested in
emulating. Just recently, a friend of mine, who is struggling with a man loudly
rejecting any commitment to her, insisted that I should just start sleeping
with someone (anyone) and that’s how
you get feelings! Meanwhile, another friend’s mother-in-law was advising her
not to feed her baby whenever it wanted, but instead give him a pacifier dipped
in soda until the baby came around to her timeframe.

Blake Snyder was sort of the exception for me.
I think, in part, it had to with a way he was introduced. I was working with a
cowriter on a radio show we hope to produce next year and she pulled out
Snyder’s Beat Sheet to outline from. This was not my normal way of going about
things, but obviously, as there were two of us writing different episodes, we
needed to get in on the general story before we could get started. As we filled
in the beats, things became clearer to me, and all of the sudden, I realized it
was exactly what I was looking for.

In many of my scripts (both play and novel) the
characters are supposed to be funny with endearing connection to one another,
but it never seemed to happen. I didn’t take the time from the plot to just
have a fun moment. But where should a
scene like that go?

Well, according to Snyder, page 30!

Blake Snyder was a screenwriter with, according
to him, a good deal of script sells, some for millions of dollars. Only two of
his movies were actually made—typical for the industry—but he believed himself
to be great at knowing what Hollywood wants, and how to pitch it.

And I believe that.

For one thing, he immediately promotes to name
your screenplay first; come up with a catchy title and then find a logline that
goes with it. Script comes third to those things. Well, as I was reading Save the Cat, Snyder’s book on how to
write a screenplay, I had several people ask me what it was about, some even
saying, “Great title!” which was bizarre compared to most of the books I’ve
read.

Since learning about the Beat Sheet last
October, I’ve applied the lessons to most of my writing, in both editing and
outlining. And regardless of the actual results, one of the nicest things about
the “formula” is that I felt less overwhelmed. I understood how to keep the
plot moving and had areas that I tended to ignore pointed out to me. In life, I
avoid conflict as much as possible, being a pretty good smooth talker when it
comes to difficult situations. It’s hard for me to have characters not understand where the other is coming
from—or even just not care—and a lot of their logical discussions subtracted
from the stakes and conflicts that could be there.

The Beat Sheet is an excellent way of putting emotional range in your
manuscript as well as recognizing easy places to add in more conflict and,
well, plot.

So I bought the book. I didn’t have people
explain the Beat Sheet to me as well as I’d like, so I wanted to get it
straight from the cat’s mouth. Unfortunately, the cat is more of a salesperson
and less of a writer than I’d hope.

Snyder’s opening states that one reason he felt
this book needed to be written was because most screenwriting advice is too
formal and pretentious. He speaks like “real people” do, complete with a lot of
exclamation points and some typographical errors.

Most importantly though, Snyder’s biggest
“casual” way of talking is really the Trumpian-method and instilling credibility
through confidence. Ever single one of his scripts is described, point blank,
as “hilarious.” He constantly states how awesome his ideas are in a
matter-of-fact sort of way. This in itself wouldn’t bother me, except that
Snyder doesn’t seem to have a lot of taste.

The loglines he shows are of films that have
been actually made, praising their qualities as examples. Not a single one of
them stick with me. All of his own ideas tend to be pithy but unrelatable,
campy, common denominator comedies that are only interesting because of the humor, not the plot, and
not really the concept. But this is common. I read a lot about queries or
pitches that succeed and what gets one person hot and bothered is not what gets
another. And let’s face it, common denominator comedy sells. It’s most of what
you see on the marquee, so I can’t disagree with his premise that, regardless
of how I feel about them, this is what works in Hollywood.

The first time he lost me, however, was when he
tried to show how changing character’s traits or situations could drastically
lower the stakes in the movie.

“A just-hired employee goes on a company
weekend and soon discovers someone’s trying to kill him.”

“In the example of The Retreat, again the adjectives come into play to tell us the
writers most likely did it right… But let’s play around with the character to
see other ways they could have gone with this same premise. What if the person
going on the retreat is 65, has been at the company for 20 years, and is about
to retire? Okay, so now it’s about a company “downsizing” its employees for
real before they can collect their retirement benefits… No one will show up for
that movie.”

Really? No one? Because that was the first time
in 52 pages he’d talked about a movie that I actually was sort of interested
in.

I like Miss Congeniality and Legally Blonde,
but for the most part, the vast majority of the films mentioned in the book
sounded really dumb. Trying too hard, personality-less, and no hint of
inspiration. Movies I would only go see because we wanted to do something and we showed up at the
theatre to randomly pick what’s best for a large group. But, let’s be fair,
that’s exactly what happened with Miss Congeniality and Legally Blonde. It
wasn’t their premises I was going after.

The book, which is mostly bossy and
closed-minded, still had some good ideas. Selling a script and writing a good
one are two totally different skillsets, and while I wish Snyder had been more
honest about his ability to sell a script rather than write one (Both of his
produced scripts, Stop! or My Mom Will
Shoot! and Blank Check, as
awesome as they sound, have lower than 14% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes), I think
that using Save the Cat! as a guide
to make your script more attractive is a good idea. These tips can contradict your inspiration and
innovation, and what makes for a catchy title isn’t always going to be one that
you, well, like, (Stop! or My Mom Will
Shoot? Really?), but they don’t
have to. They’re good ideas to apply in moderation.

He was right in what he said about loglines
needing to contain irony. Give us a trait that makes your character likeable
(with an adjective), and then tell us something unexpected about it. Hollywood
unexpected and real-life unexpected not being the same thing. And also, yes,
title matters. It just does.

Truth is, I think he knew what he was talking
about, but he was so bent around the axel when it came to “fake it ‘til you
make it,” he made himself come off as a little oblivious:

“The amazing Sheldon Bull and I wrote a
hilarious comedy in 2004. What if the President’s [sic] helicopter goes down
behind enemy lines? And what if he is forced to capture Osama Bin Laden—all by
himself? … We even had a great title: Chickenhawk
Down. And here’s why we did not sell that script: Because there are about
two people who can play the part of the President. It’s the lead. And there
really isn’t anyone out there who can “open” that movie. Tim Allen was our
first choice. And… who else? What we
had done was paint ourselves into a corner on casting. Yes, it’s funny. Yes,
it’s a great story.”

I mean, I’m no Hollywood producer, but
something tells me that Tim Allen wasn’t the reason you couldn’t get that
script sold.

When I pointed this out to my brother, he said,
“It sounds like they came up with the title first and just wrote a script on
that.”

Well, yes. As Snyder advocates.

My problem with the book, and most books of its
kind, is that instead of really thoroughly discussing the pros and cons of
their suggestions, the outcomes and whys, mentioning the goals they are
targeting, he just states everything like facts and rules and hopes you won’t
recognize his Impostor Syndrome coming through.

But when I mentioned that, people couldn’t
understand why he would want to point
out the flaws in his thinking. He’s trying to sell a book! How would it benefit
him to do so?

First off, my point isn’t really about him.
It’s that writing books need to be clear to people who tend to latch onto
formulas and get scared about being whimsical or, even, themselves. These
writers can be incredibly emotional when the time comes to “break the rules,”
ironically, more so than those who fight writing techniques like DEFCON 1. I’ve
been able to articulately explain my reasons for them breaking out of their
mold far more efficiently to people who hate
writing rules than to those who love them. The latter are more likely to
end up in tears or literally screaming, “THAT’S
NOT MY JOB!” to a modest suggestion. The biggest breakdowns I’ve had to
deal with as a critique partner is always with people who like the rules and
don’t want to hear that doing what they were supposed to didn’t work.

Mostly
though, you get cynical people like me and just by being clear the context in
which the suggestion will work, I’m more likely to agree with you. Just telling
me you’re hilarious and amazing isn’t going to do the trick. When you say,
“[Double Mumbo Jumbo is] a rule you and I can’t break!” and use an example of
how Gods and aliens don’t go together, or something else I don’t believe,
you’re sort of persuading me to throw the kitty out with the bathwater. I’m old
enough now to recognize the consequences of being like that, but many people,
especially teenagers, are more likely to say, “That doesn’t really make sense,”
and toss the entire idea. If you
however, point out, “Here’s what happens when you do this,” rather than just
telling me not to do it, I’m more likely to hear you out.

Some people need permission to do something
unexpected. Others need to feel respected in order to listen. Bossing them around
just makes them stop listening.

Mainly, there’s more than one way to save a
cat, and I think that most writing advice needs to promote understanding of
cause and effect rather than just telling you what to do. A lot of advice is
bad, and I would hate to live in a world in which only Blake Snyder’s films got
made.

The book tells you how to sell specific types of
movies. Parts are applicable to other mediums and genres, but really, he’s
telling you how to make your comedic film alluring to producers. As a book on
writing, if you can ignore his businessman talk, his narrow-view of the world,
and know to take it in moderation, I think that playing around with these ideas
can help clarify for you how to make your work better. The ideas certainly have
made me feel clearer headed. I’m just glad I heard about the concept before I
actually read it. And I think, in the end, that’s what Blake Snyder was all
about.

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Monday, July 9, 2018

When it comes to, "You're too close to your work to judge it," I would presume it’s simply more obvious that's what's happening when
someone is delusional about their talents, and so the ideology tends to center on those who think they’re
much better than they really are. But, while the feelings of frustration are
different—a sadness filling you instead of a tension—isn’t it just as painful
to watch someone awesome look at themselves with disgust?

I started writing Take the Wheel back in October 2014, more than three years ago at
this point. What’s most interesting for me personally is it was about two months
before a certain jackass came back into my life and I had a downward spiral for
the next few years. The book has been worked on in parts over time, being left in
a drawer, abandoned and forgotten in favor of other ideas.

The series of posts, “So I’m Writing This Novel,”
hoped to follow what was supposed to be a much shorter time frame in which I
talked about the creation of the book. The last article was over a year and a half
ago.

To be fair, I began work on what I intend to be
my magnum opus, the start of a series of novels all set in one world. And I too
got distracted by other novels.

But something else had happened.

During my relationship with The Jackass, I had
a bit of an adult reality check. It wasn’t that I was capable of failing, or
that my goals were a lot harder to achieve, but that “failing” doesn’t mean
failing spectacularly in a singular ball of glory. “Failing” could be a long
process of bleeding out, in which certain attempts get you closer and closer to
something you realize you didn’t want at all. I began to understand that I may never be a mother or get married, and
over the course of the last few years, I’ve actually accepted the possibility
of a celibate artist as having its benefits. Time-wise and financially, I
am able to focus on my books as a career.

I also struggled with trying to publish for the
first time and feeling lost in the void. My view of myself shifted and, though
I was unaware of it, I started to see my writing as nothing more than boring
rambles which never could interest anyone.

Depression lies.

As some of you are aware, I’ve been spending
2018 trying to turn my life in a better direction. Instead of working as a
caterer for private jets in which I was on-call 24/7, often working 15 hour
shifts and constantly worrying about special orders that may come in in the
middle of the night, I have transitioned to another place in the company in
which I now can work on my books and other projects in the frequent downtime.

Last year, I realized that a big portion of why
I tend to isolate myself is that many “social” activities don’t interest me. There’s
a reason, after all, many require booze. I decided to start getting people together
to work creatively, a means to meet people under circumstances I enjoy and am
comfortable. Because of the start of my playwriting group, First Folio, I’d
been working on some theatrical scripts since January as well as co-writing a radio
show. But due to the massive stress and just general apathy, I didn’t work much
at all. This didn’t disturb me because I’d been creating less and less over the
years, and I just… stopped caring.

Well, my life has begun to get a routine. My
work is able to be left at work now. I’m often going out with friends to do,
shocker, non-productive activities. I have a stable and private place to go
home that I’ve been decorating to my tastes and needs. I have a decent amount
of money to do what I want, and my attempts to eat and sleep better have been increased
with the lowered stress and the ability to stick to a schedule. I’ve been
talking with a counselor about unresolved issues, plus scheduled biofeedback to
deal with the tension-caused pains.

I feel better. I feel great.

In this nine hour day where I can work on my
stories while getting paid, I started to set myself back up for success. I picked
out one of the multiple books I’d left mid-tale, the favorite one that I
thought I might be most inspired to do, and I bared myself to read it, to
remind myself what had happened.

It was because of that I first realized just
how terrible of a writer I’ve been thinking I was. It was because of how easy
it was to read, no boredom, that I suddenly came face to face with the way I’d
been seeing myself.

It wasn’t fear of being bad, but acceptance. Something
that told me my stories rambled and I had nothing interesting to say. Too much
dialogue, not enough action. Too much rambling and nonsensical stories that no
one would get.

The book that is currently titled Take the Wheel has been worked on in several
ways, the beginning rewritten, a good portion of it just a summation of what
should happen. But it is an interesting story with a clear world, good pacing,
and flawed characters. They tell me the way I saw the world those three years
ago, portraying the start of my deepest depression.

After a co-writer showed me a story formula in
which enlightened me to what I felt was missing in a story, I felt restricted
to outlining and using templates to create. I wasn’t inspired and considered
most of my ideas stupid. What made me stand out? Why couldn’t I create something
that anyone would care about?

But for me to sit there and enjoy 50,000 words
of my own writing in one disjointed work day, that meant a lot. Considering how
I saw my writing being perceived, and received, I couldn’t understand how the
flow of the language and what I presumed to be inaction actually worked in cohesive,
complete scenes.

Two weeks ago I went to the Jackson Hole
Writers Conference and listened to a man who had written over nine screenplays
before Little Miss Sunshine was made.
His story about how he became a writer, and reminding me that everyone has been
seen as a hack, an amateur, a nobody regardless of who they became in the end,
really helped me reignite my passion.

I don’t know how long I will stay committed, or
if the depression is just one trigger away from returning, but it doesn’t
matter so much. The bigger point is that despite my priding myself on being
able to evaluate my own projects, I was too close to myself to really take the
experiences in my life with a critical eye, to recognize my “failures” were
normal parts of life, of the process, and to remind myself that a big part of
self-evaluation is actually reading what you’ve written.

It’s easy to get swept away with thoughts of
destiny or look for “signs” the universe finds you insignificant, but always
remember that experiences shape you, you don’t shape them. It’s not your worth
that makes bad things happen to you, and it’s easy to believe the “nothing”
that you hear back when seeking your place as a writer is the universe telling you
you’re a nobody.

So, I’m back on track, I strongly hope, and
though my next two months are jam packed with work and teaching, I have a good
plan to finish Take the Wheel by the
end of September, almost exactly four years after it began. Let’s see if I can
keep my promise.

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Friday, July 6, 2018

Hell hath no fury like the woman given permission to be a
bitch. Some girls have so much pent up aggression and rage and yet the desire
to maintain a likeable and compassionate demeanor that they rarely let it out.
The last thing you want to do is give them permission by being an asshat.

But enough about me.

Your readers are not the scorned woman who has just prior witnessed one wrong. I mean,
sure, sometimes. That surge of hate-mail that floods inboxes after a
controversial change is made? That’s the immediate anger of a scorned woman.
However, that’s often a temporary, impulsive reaction when an audience member
first realizes she has been betrayed by someone she thought she could trust.
The unfortunate reality is that most readers are past that stage. They’re not
the woman who has just found out about her husband’s selfishness, they’re the
woman who has long accepted cheating as the inevitable part of the process.

She has her pick of the litter. There are thousands of
suitors that she could choose from, none would reject her (books can’t pick their
readers, if you’re following). And even though a casual relationship is not
only possible, but guaranteed, she’s not looking for a quick, one-night stand
in most cases. Sometimes, sure, but what she really wants is that
head-over-heels in love, where she can’t get enough of him, where all she wants
to do is experience him, and hopefully, while the relationship will have a
shelf-life, that shelf life is dated far in the future. And even after he is
long gone, she still can think back to him with fond memories. Even return to
him when the next man falls flat.

However, you must realize she’s been cheated on. She has
been screwed over, left in the lurch, brought to climax just to be
disappointed. She’s given chances to those who didn’t care about first
impressions only to have them prove that it was more than just appearances they
weren’t concerned with. She’s wasted her time with a lot of losers, and the
more they hurt her, the harsher her judgment becomes.

Don’t judge a book by its cover, writers say. Judge a
book by its content. Typos can’t determine the quality of storyline. Just
because my beginning doesn’t hook you, doesn’t mean that the story isn’t good.
Appraising a book by its superficial attributes is foolish and disrespects art.

Which is all true.

People should refrain from judging books before they’ve
read them. But let’s face it, we have to do a vetting process and that vetting
process can’t be “read the whole thing” when determining what book to read next.

I’ve read many self-published books that I considered to
be excellent, yet back when I first started to become active on the internet, I
didn’t critic the external aspects of the book as harshly. I focused predominantly
on setting or plot, trying to be intrigued by summary alone. Most times, I
bought books because I wanted to support the authors. If it was a sci-fi or
fantasy novel, then I would actually try and read it. I tried to be fair to my
indie friends because I believe that self-publishing opens up a whole new
avenue of diversity for literature, and I don’t believe in be snobbery. Morally.
In practice, it happens.

But because I was trying not to be
superficial or a snob, I usually picked books that were less appealing
aesthetically, that were obviously self-published and gave me some strong red
flags even before I bought it.

I found myself burned a lot.

It’s kind of like the young girl who believes in the
goodness of men, who doubts the stereotypes who are given to her, who gives boys
a chance. It’s not uncommon for people of either gender to ignore signs of a
philanderer, a user, a sadistic narcissist, or even that person who we have no
attraction to at all. We enter into bad relationships because we think, “He’s
just not texting me because he doesn’t like to text,” only to find out months
later that he’s not texting you because he has another girlfriend he’s talking
to all of the time. Or he’s just really terrible at conversation in general.

When you give people a chance, when you give them the
benefit of the doubt, when you try and find excuses for your red flags, there’s
the possibility that you’ll find a diamond in the rough, you’ll have ignored
happenstance and shallow reasoning and found something really great. There is
merit to the idea. It’s just that it’s far more likely that whatever they’re
presenting you with is actually them.

It only takes a few times for people to accept the subtle
signs as fact. If you were to be cheated on by every boy who was texting his ex
on a first date, how many would that need to be before you became stupid for
ignoring it?

Even if a reader has all the time in the world, she can’t
read every book presented to her. If I read one book a day, that would
still only be 365 a year. I believe I come across more than that in a month.

So what is a reader to do? She has to choose which ones
to give a chance to; she couldn’t give them all one even if she wanted to.
Preferably, she’d pick the ones that she’s more likely to enjoy, but how can
she know that without having actually read them?

I’ll admit that I have hated most of my favorite books
and T.V. shows when I was first exposed to them. It wasn’t until the second (or
third or fourth or fifth) chance that I realized how much I liked them. You are
often afraid of writing something off and denying yourself a great love, so
it’s not like we do it lightly.

However, once I began to vet my books, the quality of
them started to improve drastically. When I picked up a self-published novel
arbitrarily, it was often poorly paced, typo-ridden, and lacked an ending. When
I started to trust my superficial instincts, I was more likely to come across
something well written.

I picked up the
genres that I knew I liked.

Setting is important to me. While sometimes I will give a
chance to something outside of my comfort zone—and some of my favorite books
fall into that category—I know that a great plot inside an uninteresting
location won’t interest me.

People complain about the limitation of genre, and I get
it, I really do. I think authors shouldn’t restrict themselves to being what
people expect, but we have to acknowledge that the categorization of genre is
there for a reason. When I started to only buy science-fiction and fantasy
romance novels, I started enjoying my reading again. I wasn’t attempting to
force my way through something just because I wanted to like it. I actually
considered if I did.

The trick with genre is to explain it accurately. Use it
to help people narrow down their options, then make sure to wave away any
expectations that will not be met. As long as people have a general
understanding of what type of atmosphere, setting, and reader’s motivation that
will be in your book, you’re golden.

I look for typos.

In the blog “Why Typos Lose You the Most Sales,” I irritated an indie author who believed that typos aren’t a big deal.
When I went to her Amazon page, I found, of course, many typos on the first page and
in the summary. She had only five reviews, four of them that were written by
authors who gave only five stars to every book they read, likely review exchanges.
The one review, a four star, that seemed to put thought into it complimented
her story line, but complained that the atrocious editing (my words) made it
hard to understand.

I know that there are writers who believe that judging a
book by the typo is snobbish. But this isn’t the situation of a woman meeting a
great guy and overanalyzing a physical flaw. This is a woman who has been in
many relationships with users to find that usually, if he makes selfish
decisions in the beginning he’s going to make selfish decisions in the middle,
and the end.

I’ve read great self-published books with typos. I’ve
read traditionally published books with typos, but those typos were far and few
between, and they were not on the first
page or summary. When I give a book a chance despite the poor editing, I
haven’t yet been unexpectedly surprised by a well polished storyline. Even though you might be great at
content editing and terrible at grammar, truth is, it’s more likely that you
don’t know what you’re doing and didn’t edit at all.

I read reviews for
consistency, “typos,” “didn’t finish,” and an ending.

I’ve never paid much attention to reviews, though I like
to read them for personal entertainment. Only once have I ignored one-stars and found they were right. Most one-stars are biased, exaggerated, and mean. I
had honestly believed that what they hated would be refreshing—I was picturing
it differently.

On most indie books, the bad reviews are frustrated writers
telling authors not to use the word “anyways” and that the writer is fat, the good reviews are generic review
exchanges by people who’ve never read them. For this reason, I don't read reviews for ratings, but purely content.

I look for comments about typos
first. Again, it doesn’t mean the story isn’t enjoyable, but it’s just one of
those red flags that I’ve ignored before to my detriment. Just because a review
says there’s typos doesn’t mean I won’t buy it, but if I was suspicious about
the work put in and the experience of the writer, this is often what will topple
the balance.

The next thing is consistency. I look for commentary that
was made throughout all of the reviews. What do the bad and good reviews agree
on? This, again, doesn’t tell me how I should feel about it, but it does imply the sincerity of the review
itself. Even if one person loved the rape scene and the other hated it, it
still suggests that both actually read the book and the information I get (like
the kind of setting, events and characterization) is more akin to what I’m
actually going to experience.

If they say they didn’t finish or the book just stopped,
I’m probably not going to buy. I know authors hate this, claiming that you
can’t judge a story until you’ve read it all the way through, but I argue that
Amazon reviews aren’t literary ones. They’re not intended to analyze the book’s
artistic merits, just tell other readers whether or not they’d like it, and if
they didn’t finish, I’m going to assume no, they didn't.

I hate not finishing books, but I hate reading boring
ones more. There are things in the review that might convince me that the
reason they didn’t finish isn’t going to be something that applies to me, and
if other fans say they couldn’t put it down, I might give it more of a chance. But, at the end of the day, I'm not going to read a book that is hard to finish, and I appreciate the warning.

Lastly, if it is a cliffhanger or just has no real
ending at all, that’s where you lost me. It’s not because I hate cliffhangers,
necessarily, but a book without a payoff for me feels like a huge waste of
time. Especially if the series is unfinished, but even if it’s not, I can’t
count on I will ever be satisfied. At the end of the first book, while some
threads can be left hanging, the writer needs to prove to me that he is capable
of tying some loose ends together, otherwise we’ll have a repeat of Lost.

I look at the
cover.

You can judge a book by a cover if it’s a good one. I
still take this less seriously because I have found less commonality between
bad designs and bad writing, but if the cover looks homemade, it can be a sign
that the writer is new to the business, doesn't know how to self-evaluate, and didn't bring on other people's opinions and advice. If other aspects of the book have made me
skeptical, a cover with amateurish graphic art will definitely throw me off.

If a guy comes to you on a first date without having
showered or put on a clean shirt, it might not mean that he’s a bad guy, but it
does suggest that he doesn’t care all that much. He’s not willing to do what it
takes to impress you, which is going to bleed into other aspects of your
relationship/read.

I look at
formatting.

This one is much more direct. If you have extra spaces in
the paragraphs or words cut off by the page or skewed images, it’s not a red flag you’re 'a cheater' necessarily, it just that I’m not going to tolerate being
around you. I hate reading books with extra spacing and weird formatting.

Pandering to artificial expectations isn’t just about
kowtowing to snobbery, it’s about making a person comfortable in a den of
thieves, a potential girlfriend secure after a series of cheaters. Yes, you
might be the one exception, (the main question to ask is, “Are you really?”) but why not go the extra mile to prove it? Dress nicely on the first date, don’t
text your ex, don’t ignore her for the sports game, and don’t get annoyed when
she doesn’t completely trust you on a first impression alone, especially if you’re
claiming a first impression doesn’t dictate who you really are.

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